African-American History

Tom's father was president of Dillard University and Tom was groomed to become a major figure in the Black professional world. After graduating in 1947 from Gilbert Academy, a college preparatory school for Black students located on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, Tom attended and graduated from Morehouse in 1952 with a degree in Political Science. He went on to do graduate work at Syracuse University's School of International Studies (Maxwell School of Citizenship 1952-56) where he completed all of his course work leading to a doctorate. Rather than pursue a promising academic career, Tom elected to leave Syracuse to become actively involved in the Civil Rights movement and other major events of the time. A number of years later he earned a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Goddard University in 1974. 

After a two-year stint in the United States Army (1957-59), Tom Dent moved to New York and resided there from 1959 to 1965. He worked as a reporter for a Harlem newspaper, the New York Age from 1959 to 1960. From 1960 to 1961 he had intimate contact with the impoverished areas of New York while working as a social investigator for the city Welfare Department. From 1961 to 1963 he worked as a press attach and eventually became public information director for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. At the Defense Fund he worked closely with and became a friend of Thurgood Marshall. 

During his years in New York, Tom was active as both a political and cultural activist. In addition to his NAACP work, he was active around demonstrations at the UN and in other Civil Rights and anti-Colonial struggles. As a cultural activist, Tom was one of the founders of the New York based Umbra Writer's Workshop, the first major post-sixties organization of Black writers. More than forty books have been published by Umbra Workshop members who include Ishmael Reed, Calvin Hernton and David Henderson. 

In 1965, at the beginning of what would later be called the Black Power movement, Tom Dent made two fateful decisions: He decided to return home to New Orleans for a short visit and he decided to help out with the Free Southern Theater. 

Once he returned to New Orleans, Tom Dent never left the city. Tom's association with the Free Southern Theater lasted well over a decade and included founding the FST Writing Workshop, which eventually became BLKARTSOUTH. Between 1968 and 1973, the FST Writing Workshop also published Nkombo, a literary journal. In collaboration with Richard Schechner and Free Southern Theater co-founder Gilbert Moses, Tom Dent edited the 1969 book The Free Southern Theater by The Free Southern Theater. Additionally, Tom was instrumental in founding SBCA, the Southern Black Cultural Alliance, in an effort to coordinate the activities of writers, thespians, and artists from through out the South. After leaving FST, Tom Dent would go on to found the New Orleans-based Congo Square Writer's Union and edit its journal, The Black River Journal. 

Tom Dent produced two books of poetry, Magnolia Street (1976) Blue Lights and River Songs (1982). Additionally, Tom wrote Ritual Murder, a play, which is now considered a classic of New Orleans theater. Although written in the seventies, the play's theme and commentary continues to be relevant and productions remain popular in the nineties. 

Once he returned to New Orleans Tom Dent maintained a literary and historical focus on the South. Dent commuted to and taught at Mary Holmes College in West Point, Mississippi from 1968 to 1970. In 1969 along with Dr. Jerry Ward and Charles Rowell, Tom Dent founded Callaloo, A Quarterly Journal of African and African American Arts and Letters. In the early seventies Tom Dent contributed articles and plays to the then fledgling BLACK COLLEGIAN Magazine. From 1971 to 1974 Tom Dent served as public relations director for the New Orleans anti-poverty agency. From 1979 to 1981, Tom was the Marcus Christian Lecturer in Afro-American Literature at the University of New Orleans. In 1974 he was awarded a Whitney Young Fellowship. 

Tom Dent was also an indefatigable chronicler and oral historian. Between 1978 and 1985 Tom conducted oral histories of Mississippi Civil Rights workers, and in 1984 conducted an oral history of New Orleans and Acadian musicians. The tapes from both collections are now housed at the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans. From 1984 to 1986 Tom worked as a writer on Andrew Young's autobiography, An Easy Burden. In the nineties, Tom worked with Dr. Ward on the Mississippi Oral History Project focusing on local Mississippi participation in the Civil Rights movement. 

From 1987 to 1990, Tom Dent served as the Executive Director of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation, which presents the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. During the nineties, Tom traveled in the Caribbean and in Africa investigating cultural connections between the African-heritage cultures of the Diaspora and Africa. At the time of his death, Tom Dent was working on two journals, a collection of reflections on New Orleans and a series of personal essays on the connections and disruptions between Africa and African Americans. 

Tom Dent had a lifelong commitment to the goals and objectives of the Civil Rights movement. In the midst of all of his literary activity, along with Richard and Oretha Castle Haley, and Florence Borders, Tom Dent founded Voices of the New Orleans Movement, a group dedicated to commemorating the history of the civil rights movement in New Orleans. The culmination of Tom's Civil Rights documentation was the 1996 publication of his last and most important book, Southern Journey, which was his findings resulting from revisiting towns and cities which were major sites of Civil Rights activity and interviewing with former participants and their descendants. Southern Journey is the most eloquent and informative assessment of the victories and failures of the Civil Rights movement thus far produced. 

Although he could have had a successful academic career, like many of his peers who came of age during the Civil Rights movement, Tom Dent chose to dedicate his life to the fulfillment of social goals and group aspirations. Tom Dent literally lived and worked to document and accurately tell the story of his people's struggles, dreams and achievements. Tom Dent's life serves as a sterling example of the socially committed cultural worker.